How to Choose a Treatment Center
Rehabilitation facilities and treatment centers were created to help people. Overall, they are one of the strongest tools in our arsenal against behavioral addictions such as drugs and alcohol. Despite the claims of some facilities, however, at least 60% of individuals who are treated will relapse. While it is difficult to isolate the cause of this failure to provide a lasting improvement on each individual's behavior, a new treatment rating system can help.
Treatment centers use differing approaches to rehabilitation, and many programs claim success rates that simply have not materialized. Statistics are often not released publicly, which makes it nearly impossible for individuals seeking recovery to make an informed decision on which treatment option to choose.
When individuals call us seeking advice, we give them this list of questions to help them determine how to select the most appropriate facility for their treatment:
- Does the center treat your problem
- Is the center certified and accredited
- Does the center offer one-on-one therapy
- Does the center offer diversified approaches to therapy and evidence-based treatment
- Does the center encourage family participation
- Does the center include pharmacological solutions
But there is one more, equally important question: Does the center have a reputation of success This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer, because you cannot ask the center staff directly. You may not know anyone who has been treated there, or you might not want to ask others in order to protect your privacy.
There are several very good Web resources that allow you to search for rehabilitation facilities; there are also some excellent Web boards/forums available that promote productive conversation on behavioral addiction topics. Unfortunately as good as many of these technologies are they have not yet evolved to the point where they are filling the void of user needs. Enter the FutureHealth treatment center rating system. FutureHealth has done something extraordinary by merging the two concepts, creating a facility rating/comment system that easily allows you to locate a facility and assess it based upon real user experiences. Let's break it down into its parts.
The facility location mechanism, the first part of the system, is robust. It not only searches geographically, giving distances and mapped directions to locations, it also allows for a categorical search on key elements such as the types of treatment and inpatient/outpatient criteria.
The second part of the system is the ranking system itself, which not only averages the assigned ranks for an easily assessable 5-star total, but also allows you to peruse the commentary that each user added. In a rare feature in such a system, treatment centers may respond to specific comments in an effort to improve client service and satisfaction. This is a useful tool that helps you get a sense of what takes place in the facility.
Finally, the ranking system details information about the treatment center, granting the facility the ability to log in and update the information which keeps data current and individually branded. This is a free feature that allows facilities to advertise their brand while the rating system reveals the truth underlying the message.
There is no doubt that this new tool will help, but there is still a long way to go before we can achieve the goal of changing the statistics and lowering relapse rates. When searching online, the most common recurring theme we see is how the burden of success is on the patient. The expectation is that you enter rehabilitation fully ready and absolutely committed to recovery. The problem is that it is not always just about the patient. Choosing the wrong treatment center can be disastrous, and sometimes even if you choose the right facility they may not choose you.
Whether the treatment center you choose is non-profit or in it for the money, the costs to you will be high. In some cases the price tag is as much as $20,000 a month. Prohibitively expensive rates prevent many of those addicted from getting the treatment they need. Some treatment centers may exclude you based on more than an empty wallet. If you are deemed too great a risk, or if you have certain drugs in your system, you can also be rejected. The simple truth is there are more people in need than there are facilities to treat them. Competition for the few available spaces in treatment programs can be daunting.
Companies like FutureHealth are helping individuals navigate these problems by making important, up-to-date information accessible in real time. We need the commitment of treatment centers to stay active with new cutting edge technologies like this so that we all benefit.
